January 11, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Cross purposes
Whole Foods is switching to wind power--not, the CEO emphasizes, because he is some sort of airy-fairy hippie using his shareholders' money to further his ideals, but because it makes good business sense:
"It's a sales driver rather than a cost," he said. "All of those things we do related to our core values: help drive sales, help convince a customer to drive past three or four other supermarkets on the way to Whole Foods."
Wouldn't all those extra miles driven negate any environmental value of using wind power? Just askin', is all.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 11, 2006 12:22 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksHa, that's funny, I posted an identical entry on my blog this morning:
http://www.thestalwart.com/the_stalwart/2006/01/wind_energy_use.html
Jane,
Since when do marketers believe that fulfilling their values is more important than using those values to drive consumer behavior? While the CEO may not be some sort of airy-fairy hippie, he's counting on his customers being (not especially well-considered) airy-fairy hippies.
It all kind of reminds me of my wish that the owners of Ben & Jerry's, Urban Outfitters, and the Body Shop were all secretly fronts for Charles Montgomery Burns.
I would shop at Whole Foods (because they have much better vegetables and beer selection than the local HEB), but it is quite literally 40 minutes across town to the only one in San Antonio. So, in short, screw that.
Reminds me of a fatuous column by Mr. Wolf, CEO of US Airways, in his airline magazine. He urged support of Kyoto treaty and for fellow CEOs to voluntarily meet the pre-1990 standards. I wrote and asked him when we might see an announcement that US Airways itself was curtailing flights (this was during one of their growth spurts) to pre-1990 levels. Needless to say, he never replied. Though maybe bankruptcy was their way of supporting Kyoto?
timothy - ben & jerry's is now owned by the dread unilever. is that burns enough for you?
me? i'm waiting for the soap flavor to come out. it will remind me of my childhood.
I use electricity from a nuclear power plant in Minnesota. There is nothing more renewable than nuclear power. Where are my energy credits?
Jane,
Long-time reader, first-time commenter.
I can't imagine the energy itself is more cost-efficient, but I accept the idea that it will draw more people in to its loyal customer base. I don't shop at Whole Foods since I am not willing to pay the premium it demands, but a lot of people are. The market seems to agree that it's smart; quoting from the same article, "Shares of Whole Foods rose 55 cents to close at $78.18 on the Nasdaq Stock Market." Not a huge spike, but certainly not bad.
As far as the question of extra environmental damage incurred by that '[driving] past three or four other supermarkets', I agree, I think this is an act of posing even if it's heartfelt. To take a sympathetic view, however, I suppose that if this is truly what many or most people want then, in the long run, it will cause a lot of other businesses to adopt wind power as their energy standard.
I really doubt that enough customers are really willing to pay the necessary premium, though. I know that I'm not (heartless bastard that I am), but I'm a student and definitely don't match the income (or ideology) of Whole Foods target demographic. That said, I have to give credit where credit's due. Whole Foods seems to have run a great business so far and their share price and rate of expansion seems to confirm that.
- Ben
Gee, this couldn't be the "wind power" that gets millions (billions?) of dollars in Federal and State subsidies to produce overpriced power and kill thousands of birds a year could it? Nah.
By adopting windpower as their enviro-friendly power of choice Whole Foods is, of course, alienating the Audobon society wing of their target enviro-demographic group.
All those birds mashed to a pulp by the wind turbines? tsk. tsk.
Yeah, that quote caught my eye to. Maybe Whole Foods will start selling solar-powered cars, or electric cars which can be re-charged via wind power.
By the way, Whole Foods can be very pricey, but it doesn't have to be, if one pays attention to their store brand prices and sales, and one would be hard-pressed to find better wine values in the ten dollar range.
Also, in my town, Whole Foods is the only place that bakes a decent baguette, and for $1.79, it's a pretty good deal.
I think it's safe to say that, in general, business decisions will be motivated by the bottom line. This is because our corporate structures and social systems are set up in a way that rewards monetary gain (promotions, job security, raises) better than fulfillment of ideals, environmental or otherwise (Earth Day Conference t-shirt).
As an example, Brazil just announced that its sugar-based ethanol technology is finally efficient enough for the country to replace a significant chunk of gasoline consumption with the use of this cleaner fuel alternative. This time, the motivations for spending 30 years developing this technology were both political and economic: the country aims to become energy independent by the end of the year. The success occured because the rewards (greater tax revenues, economic stability, more foriegn policy negotiation power, etc.) were directly relevant to those making the decisions and undertaking the risks.
silly dumb hippies caring about the environment. who cares?
Michelle:
If Brazil has been developing an ethanol infrastructure for 30 years, I doubt it can ever realize a positive NPV on the project.
I don't want to think about the water it's going to suck up and the waste it's going to dump in the Amazon.
Also, I'd be dubious that Brazil's self-reliance on ethanol could withstand a general enrichment of the country such that far more people wanted cars.
Brazil has a lot of poor people not using much, if any ethanol. When (heopfully!) they start getting richer, they'll start wanting more energy, and it doesn't seem likely that ethanol will be able to keep up - or if it does, it'll involve a hell of a lot more ethanol farming than they have now.
Lately I've been thinking that algae-farming for biodiesel is probably a better bet, overall.
Exactly, Sigivald! It's all of a piece: wind power is "boutique" power, organic food is "boutique" food, ethanol is "boutique" fuel... As Glenn Reynolds says, the real way to save energy is to telecommute. Doesn't work if you're a bus driver, firefighter, teacher, etc., of course...
"As Glenn Reynolds says, the real way to save energy is to telecommute. Doesn't work if you're a bus driver, firefighter, teacher, etc., of course..."
Unless there are remotely piloted vehicles that could do the work safer and more efficiently. You'd think there would be more of them by now for the really dangerous jobs.
wasnt some person,in brazil, complaining about the amazon being chopped down for ethanol production
Wouldn't all those extra miles driven negate any environmental value of using wind power?
Depends how many extra miles would be driven and how much emissions from other sources would be reduced by replacing them with wind energy. Sounds complicated. I say just stick with knee-jerk anti-airy fairy hippieism.
You'd think there would be more of them by now for the really dangerous jobs.
Some people have made the decision that lives are cheaper than the technology.
Some people have made the decision that lives are cheaper than the technology.
Some people have made the decision that jobs are more important than lives.
"Wouldn't all those extra miles driven negate any environmental value of using wind power?"
Yes. But organic groceries are a vanity product for wealthy consumers who are concerned with appearances, and they'll go the extra mile to maintain them. The guy who runs this company is no idiot.
Whole Foods isn't really running on wind power, unless they shut down whenever the wind isn't blowing. All this means is that they pay extra for their power company to swap excess wind power when the wind is blowing for conventional (mostly coal) power the rest of the time.
I had a grandfather who made a bare living as a "farmer" who never planted a crop, but just collected federal money for leaving his acreage unplanted. The wind power business seems to be quite a lot like that. With all sorts of direct subsidies, they still can't actually make a profit without charging airy-fairy hippies higher prices. Considering what the high cost of wind farms actually represents (capital costs for electrical equipment, towers, and blades, operating costs for a team of repairmen driving out to different towers every day), I wonder if the environmental impact of producing and fueling all that isn't worse than the coal-based power that they replace.
The guy who runs this company is no idiot.With Wholefoods share values over $76 per share, I'd say you weren't kidding.
I thought I just said that -- but with more snarkiness:
http://differentriver.com/archives/2006/01/11/whole-foods-buys-wind-energy-to-increase-pollution
Unless there are remotely piloted vehicles that could do the work safer and more efficiently. You'd think there would be more of them by now for the really dangerous jobs.
There's already teach-by-video, or "distance learning". Does that count?
Unless there are remotely piloted vehicles that could do the work safer and more efficiently. You'd think there would be more of them by now for the really dangerous jobs.
Some people have made the decision that lives are cheaper than the technology.
Some people have made the decision that jobs are more important than lives.
Jeez you people are cynical.
In reality, there are as-yet insurmountable technical and economic barriers. Wireless teleoperation of vehicles is incredibly complex - do you really want firetrucks subject to lost signal like your cellphone or TV when they're barreling down mainstreet at 60mph? Do you know how many live channels of high-def video it would require to give the remote operator anything even slightly like the 360 degree vision a human gets just by turning his/her head? Can you imagine the airwave noise and clutter with 200+ such systems operating simultaneously in New York city? You'd give any radio engineer a nervous breakdown.
Teleoperation of anything mission-critical is only now beginning to be a real option for the military, where they can afford to spend $20M to outfit a single vehicle.
There's a point where the partisan rhetoric is just meaningless because the engineers, the state of technology, and the laws of physics have a rather stronger veto.
Jonah Goldberg at national review wrote an article about what this is really all about, which is manufacturing a group identity, "Gaiam Somebody" http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg030701.shtml
Teleoperation of anything mission-critical is only now beginning to be a real option for the military, where they can afford to spend $20M to outfit a single vehicle
I'm waiting for the inevitable "so you admit that this is all about money!" follow-up. :)
Uh, read the article more closely. They're not “switching to wind power” in the sense that any stores will be generating and using their own power. They're buy credits. It ain't the same the thing.
A Whole Foods (or Whole Paycheck, as we laughingly call it) is being built less than two blocks from where I live). Now that's an energy savings.
Howdy,
I'm a founder of Renewable Choice Energy, the company selling the wind power to Whole Foods. You can swing over to my blog and read a post I wrote about the myth that wind farms kill birds.
Cheers,
Shea
Looks like this blog has just been visited by the consciousness-raising fairy. Thank you Shea.
Entertainingly enough, the current top post on Shea's blog is about comment spam.
In reality, there are as-yet insurmountable technical and economic barriers. Wireless teleoperation of vehicles is incredibly complex - do you really want firetrucks subject to lost signal like your cellphone or TV when they're barreling down mainstreet at 60mph? Do you know how many live channels of high-def video it would require to give the remote operator anything even slightly like the 360 degree vision a human gets just by turning his/her head? Can you imagine the airwave noise and clutter with 200+ such systems operating simultaneously in New York city? You'd give any radio engineer a nervous breakdown.
Balderdash; you have envisioned a system that is massively overbuilt relative to what it needs to be. With (1) the remote operator using a VR suit, (2) an AI program tracking the operator movements (including eye position) and managing a single high-bandwidth data feed to and from the vehicle , and (3) GPS navigation and an intelligent semi-autonomouse collision avoidance system installed on the vehicle, a practical remote emergency vehicle could be built now with available or mostly-available technology. And it need not cost $20 million, either.
Assuming mass-market production, and not including the operator training costs, liability insurance, or the vehicle itself (a large firetruck can cost somewhere around $350,000, for example), a practical system ought to be doable for well under a million dollars per, and probably less than a quarter million in mass-market production.
We just haven't quite reached the point where there is a high-demand market for such a thing. But there are no "insurmountable" barriers.
Yeah, renewable energy's just a boutique notion for self-indulgent hippies. Wind, solar, biodiesel - just subsidized playthings for the granola crowd. Bike paths, public transportation: puh-leeze.
Funny, but without any consideration of market prices for traditional energy, renewable energy prices are steadily moving toward economically viable. But given this site's economic bent, I guess we can't actually ignore market prices for traditional energy. Funny, but the trends there also reflect the increasing competitiveness of renewables.
But that's beside the point. It's not like we, or our kids or our grandkids, have anything to worry about regarding the supply of fossil fuels. From what I read, supplies are plum ready to last forever.
And any so-called downsides of fossil fuels - transport, political leverage, pollution, etc. - are probably just MSM concoctions. No actual worries there, either.
So, jump in the SUV and roar down to the closest grocery - or the farthest, for that matter. Oh, wait, SUV's. Talk about self-indulgence. But I guess that would be the hippies again, right ?
Cheers,
Rofe: with respect to Whole Foods, SUVs and self-indulgence
The difference being SUV owners aren't deluding themselves into believing the SUVs are anything other than a self-indulgence (mmm... space, safety (assuming you actually know how to drive it), and dvd players for the kiddies all for an extra recurring cost of $20/month on gas).
It's the delusion that's being mocked and it's the delusion that Whole Foods is exploiting for mad cash. But more power to Whole Foods, they're filling a market demand, and that's a good thing in my mind.
There was good article in Reason mag a few months ago with the head of Whole Foods making the argument about why being socially responsible was good for his business..
ah, here it is online: http://www.reason.com/0510/fe.mf.rethinking.shtml
interesting debate between him, milton friedman, and the head of Cypress semiconductor.
mackey comes across well... seems like a really sharp guy..
Y'all are overlooking a more basic obstacle to the use of teleoperated vehicles.
Even if the connection was unbreakable (say, we figured out how to make tiny wormholes that we could push bits through, giving us a link with no interference and no attenuation that could go anywhere in the universe), would you want to ride in a vehicle whose pilot didn't have his own neck on the line as well as yours?
"Funny, but without any consideration of market prices for traditional energy, renewable energy prices are steadily moving toward economically viable."
Comparing the "price" of electricity produced by a 35% availability generator with the price of utility-level reliability electricity is a joke! I'll save you the mathematics. Achieving utility-level reliability with best availabile current technology wind turbines requires the installation of 20 turbines of a given size at 20 carefully selected locations to reliably provide the output of any 1 of the wind turbines. Granted, there will be far more power available, at far lower reliability, but also of far lower value.
Therefore, if the price of the intermittent output of current technology wind turbines ultimately equals the price of utility electricity, the price per reliable kilowatt hour will be only 20 times the price of utility power of comparable reliability, less the price of the unreliable additional power available from the wind turbines.
In the simplest case, the total output of the 20 wind turbines would be the equivalent of the output of 7 or the wind turbines operating at rated capacity 100% of the time. Thus, even if the intermittent output of the wind turbines commanded the same price as the reliable output (possible under regulation, but not in a competitive market), the price of the reliable output would still be ~3 times the price of utility electricity.
I bet most people out there are aware that all alternative energies cost more than regular energy, and also that the extra drive probably negates the fossil fuel energy savings from going to whole foods. Maybe not though.
What I think they are also aware of is that by supporting alternative energy, it makes it more likely that we will get more, and less expensive alternative energy. Profit breeds competition, competition breeds lower prices, especially in largely technology driven sectors as opposed to something like the commodity driven FF markets. I think lots of people in the upper income brackets are aware of this dynamic - thats why they are in the upper income brackets. Plus, Whole Foods has lots of yummy stuff.
Alternative energy gets cheaper and cheaper every year. Its not competitive with FF energy, but with the current rate of 5% price reductions every year, and with FF energy going up in price, it won't be all that long before its competitive.
Heres a question: At what relative price level will YOU switch to alternative energy? If it is 50% more expensive will you switch? If it is 20% more expensive, will you switch? If it is 5% more expensive, will you switch? These people are making there choice at a much higher point than the average population.
I frequently make the assumption that poor people want what rich people want. What does this say about alternative energy?
Additionally, I don't think Whole Foods has that big of a hippy following. Its much more yuppie than hippy. Hippys shop at co-ops, man, dont you know, and they usually don't work at jobs pay them enough to pay 1.5X as much for organic food as they would at that co-op where their friend works. In fact, its got a bad, bad reputation in the actual hippy community. And next time you go in to a Whole foods, take a look at the products. Lots of expensive, speciality foods, fine cheese, and stuff like that. Where is all the foul tasing potions and shelf after shelf of colon cleansers?
A single 555-megawatt gas-fired power plant in California generates more electricity in a year than do all 13,000 of all the states wind turbines. The gas-fired plant sits atop a mere 15 acres. The 300-foot-tall windmills impact over a hundred thousand acres.
Environmental impact?
"Yes. But organic groceries are a vanity product for wealthy consumers who are concerned with appearances, and they'll go the extra mile to maintain them." And all the other comments about organic groceries and alternative energy sources being "boutique" products for only the rich.
Once upon a time, homes wired for electricity, transportation that didn't require a domesticated animal as its source of power, and running water (including toilets that flush) were also boutique amenities.
Whole Foods claims to support local growers. Presumably the food comes from only 100 miles or so away instead of 1000+ miles. In which case driving an extra mile isn't a big deal on the energy transportation scale. Even if they get the food from the same location as the closer market the closer market would have had to ship the food the extra mile farther so the total distance traveled is the same although shipping the food in bulk is more energy efficient than driving that distance.
BP
The gas fields and pipeline to send the gas to the gas fired plant take up more than 15 acres although I don't think they take up the 100,000 acres of wind mills.
I for one will be happy to switch energy sources as soon as a reasonably competitive one arrives on the scene. (Don't tell my husband; he works for a midstream company.) So in a sense I guess I'm like the parents who rely on other parents to do what they think is deleterious to their own children's health - vaccinate them - in order to protect their own children (wow, that was tortured): I want other people to bear the burden of extra cost/risk until such time as it becomes economical or safe for me to jump in. (More succintly, I rely on early adopters.)
So go for it, Whole Foods - but Genuardi's is a mile from my door, and I'll probably keep shopping there rather than ten miles down the Main Line at Whole Foods. No matter how much wind energy is involved.
Wouldn't all those extra miles driven negate any environmental value of using wind power?
And as long as we're applying cold hard logic to feel-good liberalism, doesn't jetting around in a private Gulfstream negate the environmental value of railing against SUV owners...?
Whole Foods claims to support local growers. Presumably the food comes from only 100 miles or so away instead of 1000+ miles.
Yes, and WalMart grocery can be thanked for that. An uncle of mine is an ex-farmer from Colorado's Platte River valley, early retired after selling to a developer finally became a more profitable than bitterly scrapping for water rights. He once sold to area Safeway stores, King Soopers (Kroger subsidiary), Albertsons...etc.
But once WalMart added groceries to its lineup and began extracting the usual blood-from-a-turnip deals out of its ag suppliers, the other large grocers followed suit in order to maintain cost-competitveness, and stopped buying from the local smaller operations (or made the terms of sale unprofitable). Thereafter his primary customers were Wild Oats, Whole Foods, and the Asian Market in Denver.
Whot about Solar ... and Its a sales Driver ??? now they might be treading on thin ice time eill tell.
mynewsbot.com
Wind power? Is Joe Biden hooked up out in the back somewhere?
Customers are of course welcome to bicycle past three or four other grocery stores as well. That way you can work off Whole Paycheck's yummy ciabatta bread.
Man you people crack me up. When wind power is the topic then all of a sudden you get all squishy over a few dead birds, if those same birds stood between you and more cheap oil then all of a sudden anyone who even peeps about bird welfare is an enviro-fascist.
Same thing with hybrid cars, you will all do the cost benefit analysis and have a jolly good time pointing out that the extra cost of the car is more then any savings that might be realized. But it apparently is A-OK to by a $40,000 gas guzzling SUV with heavy duty suspension, super charged multi-valve engines, and high performance 4 wheel drive because you have a couple of kids to haul around to soccer games when a $20,000 mini-van with more fuel economy would do the job more then adequately.
As for me I’m all for Nuclear power, every country should have a breeder reactor because then we won’t have to argue about which country is a nuclear power, every country will be one. Can’t wait until that day comes.
Totally off topic. What chair did Jane finally buy? (re this post).
Back to your regularly scheduled crunchy granola vs steely eyed realist rant.
But which side are the crunchy granolas? The save the bird crowd?
Who are the steely eyed realists? The change before peak oil devastates the economy crowd?
Careful what you say around here, Rick. These are people who believe that the executive has the right to spy on you without a warrant, declare you an enemy combatant and detain you indefinitely without bringing charges against you, and torture you while they have you in custody.
I live in Houston.
We now have bike paths. No one ever uses them because it's either too hot or too rainy most of the time. We lost lanes of regular traffic, too, when the installed the bike lanes, so automotive traffic is worse.
We now have light rail. It connects downtown to the two football stadiums, the museum district, and the medical center. It also removed traffic lanes and when it was installed. I don't know how it's doing as far as ridership goes, but no one is commuting on it (unless they already only had a five minute commute or so).
The argument that we should all start using alternative energy to make it get cheaper is kind of silly. Should we all be buying expensive, newly available products in other areas to make them get cheaper?
Yeah rick, its horrible. It's so common from the right. Take an extreme position, pretend its the mainstream liberal view, denounce libs as extremists/hypocrites/whatever. Its designed to obscure the real debate. Just like the 'airy fairy hippy granola crowd' comments. Whole foods isn't marketing to hippies, they are marketing to upper class people. Look at the store locations and tell me I am wrong. Look at whole foods home page and tell me I am wrong. It looks like a well appointed loft apartment, down to the tasteful background color of the webpage. Hell, its the color of my bedroom - my graphic designer wife will disagree...But over here, those consumers are 'airy-fairy hippies', not urban rich people.
Earnest,
Sounds like a very poorly designed light rail system. Light Rail works lots better when they take people from where they live to where their jobs are located. In fact, it almost seems like it was designed to fail! What are the odds of that? I would doubt any competent urban planner would choose those locations as the first to connect in a network.
I don't think anyone here (except you) was making the argument that we should all switch to alt energy too make it cheaper.
EI,
I think you make the right point. You just use the wrong verb. Nobody 'should' use alternative energy to make it cheaper.
But just like some folks gotta be first to have the newest, fastest, sleekest gadget (PC, laptop, Blackberry, DVD player, ad infinitum) and are willing to pay a premium to do so, some folks are willing now to pay a premium (be it in actual dollars, having an odd-looking car, or hosting a god-awful contraption on their roof) for alternative energy.
And just like the prices for all those new, fast, sleek gadgets come down with economies of scale and technological advances, alternative energy is showing the same trends (if not the same time scale). Not to mention factoring in geo-political strategic concerns or environmental considerations.
1800 - "No mechanical contraption's gonna replace teamsters and their wagons !"
1900 - "No machine is gonna replace the horse and buggy !"
2000 - "No boutique energy is gonna replace fossil fuels !"
Cheers,
> Light Rail works lots better when they take people from where they live to where their jobs are located.
And when people live/work at relatively few locations, and those locations are easily connected with a few lines.
Oh, and when people don't do anything other than commute, like shop. (Bulk shopping and light rail don't mix.) If they insist on shopping, the above locations constraint.
As the man says, it's related to their core values: help drive sales.
There is a short on Whole Foods and Energy on CNBC right now
EI is right about Light Rail in Houston. It really doesn't do anything. This city is too big and spread out. It lacks the density to support mass transit. At the same time the current multibillion dollar I-10 widening project makes no sense. It is the classic "we can pave our way out of traffic problems". I really don't know what the answer is.
the costs of windpower are almost all upfront capital costs with minimal ongoing costs. the power is intermittent.
the costs of natural gas powered plants is mostly all fuel with relatively low initial capital costs. the power is on-demand.
these are obviously complimentary, and in places where there is sufficient wind, i.e. the great plains, wind is very economically viable.
i commend whole foods for 1) exploiting the yuppies and 2) for advancing the future of wind power, even if it's only marginally.
this new source of demand for wind power will lead to more capital investment in more wind turbines and in-turn make ge wind invest to make wind turbines more efficient and economically viable.
Careful what you say around here, Rick. These are people who believe that the executive has the right to spy on you without a warrant, declare you an enemy combatant and detain you indefinitely without bringing charges against you, and torture you while they have you in custody.
Yeah...and they're watching you right now! Quick! TO THE TINFOIL STASH! WRAP! WRAP!
This is an area I know rather a lot about, having spent my career in the utility business.
The installation of every, single utility-owned project has been a purely political decision. I limit it to utility-owned because that is my field. But it is no different for any other project.
There is absolutely no possibility of reliable power from wind, and no economic justification for them. Period. Wishing it to be so will never make it so. Don't believe it? Does the wind always blow hard enough where you live to turn a turbine? Can a wind turbine increase it's output on demand? The answers are both no. The projects cannot be economically justified. Ever.
However, State and Federal laws, rules and political pressures have made many utilities invest in what they know to be a losing technology for no other reason than to gain points with regulators. I know - I have been there when the projects were approved. Every person in the room understood it was a complete and utter waste of money - but the regulators encouraged it AND ALLOWED THE UTILITIES TO PASS THE COSTS THROUGH to the consumers. Hence, the company gets "good boy" points AND doesn't actually have to pay for any damned thing at all. The environmentalists successfully taxed every one of you (and me) with a worthless, show technology that just makes them feel warm and fuzzy all over.
And the utility has to build full, stand-by generating assets to be there when the wind power isn't. So it's a double whammy and waste of resources.
That's why you have all these wonderful wind farms, boys and girls. Not because they can ever make sense, no matter how much they "drop in cost" or how much other energy sources increase in cost.
Sorry to rain on the hippies and all.....
But it apparently is A-OK to by a $40,000 gas guzzling SUV with heavy duty suspension, super charged multi-valve engines, and high performance 4 wheel drive because you have a couple of kids to haul around to soccer games
My kids don't play soccer, but this sounds like one impressive SUV! Where can I get one?
Sixty-four comments? Have you considered applying for a wind power subsidy? ;-}
One point no one has raised: The first few of the big tower wind generators were a novelty, but wind farms are becoming a hell of an eye sore in some areas. I'd predict increasing opposition to the big towers (wasn't there already opposition to a wind farm off the Mass. coast?).
Gaius Arbo said "That's why you have all these wonderful wind farms, boys and girls. Not because they can ever make sense, no matter how much they "drop in cost" or how much other energy sources increase in cost.". OK...does anyone else see why this statement has some problems?
anony-mouse, what I said is exactly what the Bush administration and its supporters have asserted many times clearly and unambiguously. If you have a problem with the current state of affairs, take it up with your president.
anony-mouse, what I said is exactly what the Bush administration and its supporters have asserted many times clearly and unambiguously. If you have a problem with the current state of affairs, take it up with your president.
The inside of your head must have auditorium seating, given the number of voices that are evidently at work; I can't even begin to fathom where you pulled out a relevant basis for that entire second sentence. As for the first, text without context is pretext, and that's a whopper of an affectation you have going there.
Suggest sticking with the tinfoil. It is inexpensive, shiny, and makes for a mighty fine Faraday cage.
I question the efficiency of wind power. How many windmills (if soley wind power was used for production), how much land, and how much petrolium would it take to make a windmill?
No, Jim, what is the problem with that statement?
I take it you are not an engineer. I'm working on a post on this subject right now. I'll post it on my own site when I get done with a peer review.
Bottom line - wind power cannot ever be economically or engineering justified. Any system that is so inherently unreliable as to require an installed 100% backup system cannot be justified. If you were required to buy a car that would only run a percentage of the time and could start or stop at completely unpredictable random times, would you be happy? And then after buying that car, you were required to buy another fully fuctional one to cover the times the first was unavailable? Would that make any sense to you?
There may be other reasons for installing wind power, but those reasons are political and/or moral (depending on viewpoint). It does not matter how much costs increase or decrease. Wishing doesn't make it so, sorry.
Best case projections allow for wind systems to be available 35% of the time. Those projections are actually not accurate because they do not take into account time of day loading. In other words, the wind systems may be capable of producing power at night when demand is lowest, not during the day when it is most needed. There are a host of other reasons why these systems don't really work as advertised.
Basically, these systems come down to wishful thinking, not sound engineering.
Apologies to this site for going off on a sidebar conversation from the intent of the original thread.
Because, Gaius, you specifically stated that it would be true no matter how efficient wind ever got or how expensive other sources became. First, you leave out the question of whether or not we might discover more effective transmission systems. Secondly if it came down to where wind cost a quarter of the cost of oil or natural gas generation systems (or less) it isn't worth generating power from wind where you can and when you can in order to reduce the amount of oil or other fuels being used, thus reducing your overall cost of generating power? Also, you make broad statements that are more political than technical. Where in the country are you? How reliable is wind in your part of the country versus other places? Frankly, what has been passing for conservative political discourse in here is pretty pathetic. Let's make fun of any environmentalist ideas and sit on our asses and pretend nothing will ever change seems to be its limits.
Ah, I see. We come now to the "then a miracle happens" stage of the mathematical analysis.
Do you understand the physics of transmission? If a fundamental breakthrough occurs, of course that changes some things, but not enough to matter - because the issue is not transmission. Basing policy on "what if" is not exactly a great way to go.
I happen to live in the area that all the advocates say is the perfect place for all these wind farms. The midwest. At the moment, there is not anything near enough wind blowing to turn a turbine. You'll have to take my word on that I suppose. Last night was dead still, but the wind was gusting very, very high yesterday - likely too high for wind generators.
As far as if the cost should magically drop to 1/4 of other forms (unlikely) that still does not negate the need for 100% available backup ON LINE at all times to cover demand. You are right to say that when everything is perfect, some costs can be avoided. Unfortunately, other costs cannot, no matter how you do the equations. Don't ask an environmental activist with an agenda - ask a power engineer if you do not believe me. If I sound a bit snarky, I am honestly not trying to. This is my profession, not a hobby or a religion. I understand this rather complicated field fairly well.
As far as sweeping political statements, I don't think so. But I admit to a gratuitous hit in my first comment. Apologies if that hit a nerve.
> we might ... if it came down
We shouldn't base spending decisions today on what might, or might not, happen in the future.
Also, you're grasping at straws if you think transmission cost reductions will help with time of day problems. The US is only three time-zones wide. If, for example, east coast wind farms kick in too late for east coast use, they can only contribute to two hours of west coast use.
If you want to rely on intermittent power sources, you better figure out energy storage, and conversion is subject to the laws of thermodynamics no matter how much one might wish otherwise.
On a personal note, I note that few people who claim that some upcoming techno change will change things are actually willing to invest their money in said change.
wind power cannot ever be economically or engineering justified. Any system that is so inherently unreliable as to require an installed 100% backup system cannot be justified.
The power plant at the college I went to a few years back had several different power sources and could switch from one to another depending on fluctuating costs. As long as people aren't expecting wind to provide 100% of their energy 100% of the time, I don't see why reliability is a problem. If a coal or gas fired plant can pick up the slack, then let it. And people are looking at developing flywheels to store energy produced at off-peak times.
Nuclear power, of course, seems the best option for the bulk of our energy (even though 2 out of 3 nuke plants here in AZ are offline right now.) I wish more environmentalists would come around to that understanding. (It'd also be nice if the US Government no longer banned the refinement of nuclear waste into plutonium to be re-used in reactors, as well as harvesting the helium released by the remaining waste. But that's a separate issue.)
But it would seem that the more alternative sources of power we have, the less a sudden spike in one type of fuel will impact us. Why is a redundant system a bad thing?
The land used up by wind farms is a good point. Why can't we use those big metal posts be used as part of the support structure for warehouses or somthing similar?
The statement that wind cannot ever be justified seems overly broad to me. Electric wells on my friend's ranch in colorado pumped water into the cattle's water trough. As long as they worked part of the time, small windmills (and even solar panels) were enough to power the devices. Similarly, if you charge a battery, it doesn't matter when it's charged as long as it's charged when you get there. And as somthing of a survivalist, I wouldn't mind having a power source that didn't rely on mines 1000 miles away. The more options we have, the better.
If I need to pay extra for my power in order to encourage the development of new technology, that seems a more worthwhile expenditure to me than a trip to the opera, the casino, a football game, or many of the other pointless luxury goods people buy.
On a personal note, few people who claim that some upcoming techno change will change things are actually willing to invest their money in said change.
Then explain why Whole Foods announcement caused their stock to jump, even when Whole Foods is already quite expensive. Explain why some people pay a premium for electric cars even though they're currently likely to be more expensive than regular cars in terms of TCO. Call it the "snob factor" if you want, but there are early adopters of new technologies driving the market.
Andy,
I count 4 time zones?
There is more and more resistance to wind farms for ALL kinds of reasons.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69971-0.html?tw=rss.index
If a coal or gas fired plant can pick up the slack, then let it.
Not quite. Coal-fired power is a turn-on, leave-on technology because the system has a very large initial capital investment, expensive matinenance, significant infrastructure requirements (cooling pond, railroad) and a large thermal capacitance. In short, it has a massive amount of momentum and thus cannot "take up slack" -- if you need it, then it is built and thereafter it runs pretty much all the time, save for an emergency or normal maintenance shutdowns (the coal is pulverized and blown into the furnace by a high pressure air stream for best possible combustion, but this does slowly erode the boiler plumbing).
Now, gas turbines are used mainly for peaking generation because they can be turned on and off quickly, and are also used to keep revenue flowing into a power plant during maintenance shutdowns of the coal-fired baseload. Only problem with turbines is, natural gas has become very expensive as supplies have become constrained.
Wind power is a nice idea but frequently impractical for the levels of power consumption present in the US (about 5 terrawatts per year IIRC) and the corresponding consumption profile. It's nice when it CAN be used, but anyone placing energy-independence hopes in the wind will probably inherit the same.
I see a few folks see what the real issues are, then. I did post some stuff on my blog about this, BTW. I stand by my statements that wind power cannot be justified from an engineering or economic standpoint. If that sounds overly sweeping to some folks, it's because of my background in this area.
Regarding coal plants "taking up the slack". Anony-mouse was pretty darn correct. All large plants have real (sometimes extreme) issues with cycling up and down. I have been at start-ups where chemistry holds lasted many days. Meaning we could not increase power until certain chemistry requirements in the water were met. Startups can be a real problem for any number of reasons. Things break on startup quite often.
Some plants are very, very hard to cycle for a number of different reasons. Most base load units are used that way because they are so hard to move around. Some simply can't be used to load follow.
Let's say that somehow enough wind turbines did come online to seriously effect the grid. I would expect the system to become more and more unstable as more and more large plants were cycled below their stability points. The thought of all this free power is very alluring. But the engineering facts are what they are. Most people pushing wind power the hardest simply do not understand the way that the power supply actually works. As opposed to the way some people think it works.
Oh, and by the way, gas turbines can only start a certain number of times before they require maintenance and/or a rebuild. Fact of life. They are better than they used to be, but they still have issues. And if they fail to light on the first try, they are locked out from restarting for several hours (safety mechanism). So counting on GTs to take up the slack isn't a real good idea, either.
If and when someone actually comes up with a real storage solution, things might change. But they likely won't. Thermodynamics still have to be obeyed. Entropy always increases. I didn't make the laws, but I have to obey them.....
As for whole foods (back on the subject this thread was supposed to be about) has anyone taken the time to see what they actually bought? They did not actually buy one watt of power. They made an advertising buy. (Which worked nicely for them, look at all the MSM buzz they generated) See for yourself. See if you see anything wrong with the picture.
Anyway, feel free to look at what I posted at my site and leave a comment if you have any questions about it. I'll try to answer them there instead of thread jacking over here. Again, my apologies to this site for side-tracking.
Gaius
I wish someone would calculate the rough volume of exhaust fumes released as a result of conscience stricken consumers driving the extra couple of K's to get to the wind-enhanced environs of Whole Foods.
I'm actually a fan of foods designated "natural" and I dose regularly with herbs and other odd tinctures - however I think the operators of these health conscious establishments can only be called "hippies" is a euphemistic sense. I lived in Toronto, and the prices made you realize that more than peace and love was going on.
The move to harness the elements sounds as much marketing ploy to me, as a decision driven by environmental righteousness.
So is there a large contingent of wind-power positive consumers out there who had been holding out from shopping at Whole Foods because, darn it, they just couldn't justify buying their box of Peace Cereal there until Whole Foods got its stores off the grid?
Yeah, I didn't think so, either. The only place this development is going to generate a burst of noxious emissions is in the blogosphere.
Related, but also independently of the whole wind issue, bike to the store! Walk to it.
If you have alot to carry, try one of these. I picked one up and it is magic.
www.xtracycle.com
It is true that a hippie dippie who drives far to go to Whole Wind will do worse than if he had just biked to the local mart.
But the car culture problem applies more to all Americans, their sedentary lifestyles, soft muscles, and hard arteries.
gaius,
"Bottom line - wind power cannot ever be economically or engineering justified."
you are right to say that wind alone cannot provide all power to the grid, but to say it has no role is the nation's power supply is silly and close-minded thinking. when natural gas prices are high, wind-power is very attractive to offset those turbines. we're not talking baseload here, but maybe 10% of total system power at peak - that's still a LOT of un-burnt natural gas.
also, don't just think in terms of offsetting downtime via peaking plants - didn't your utility have a lot of industrial customers that used power when it was available and are highly sensitive to price? (al smelters, mini-mills, chemical manufacturers, etc.)
wind power is only useful in abundant wind areas, such as s. dakota. i don't want to see the east coast mountaintops covered with windtowers either, but why not put them where there are more cows than people and the gently turning blades offset the dull, topographically-challenged plains that go on as far as the eye can see? maybe these communities would like the industrial jobs that follow cheap power, like aluminum smelters along the snake river.
I think you are misreading what I have been saying. Go back and re-read the comments and read what I posted. Interestingly, there is a link from a commenter on my site that verifies many of the points I raise. All arguments for wind power approach it from the generation side, not the whole system. That's where a lot of the communication problems come from.
Frankly, there aren't all that many manufacturers left of the type you mention, at least not in the areas I have worked. Some, not a lot. Most of those kind of plants were part of "load shed" agreements, as well. Meaning they got dropped off if a crisis developed on the grid.
You're also missing the fact that putting the farms in SD runs into transmission problems. The grid out there does not need that much power, and line losses would prohibit you from moving it to where it would be useful. It would take quite a while to describe how transmission and load dispatch is accomplished. Building excess, intermittant power in a remote area does not mean that industry will necessarily follow. There's not much infrastructure out that way, so no place for folks to live or shop. All of that would need to be developed, not just putting in cheap, unreliable power...
You seem to think also that the prairies need some sprucing up. Some people like the prairies as they are, sorry. The plants would be more practical (though still not justifiable from an engineering standpoint) on your ridgelines. Closer to population centers, not further away. I rather imagine you wouldn't be quite as taken with the technology if you actually had to look at the turbines all day every day.
I haven't even discussed VARs and other measures required to support grid voltage. If you interpret what I am saying as close-minded, so be it. Rather, I think I am a realist who understands quite a lot about the power supply, not just the generation end of it. Absent a fundamental shift in technology, these systems are not a good choice. Until the "miracle occurs" stage becomes a reality, wind power is a bad approach to energy independance. If the miracle does occur, I would have to revisit a lot of areas. I'll not hold my breath while waiting though.
Gaius: I wouldn't mind looking at wind towers all day long. For one thing, that would mean I was in an office with a window instead of a cube, but mainly I find the single-tube towers rather pretty, and a good complement to the stunted jack pines that make up most of the scenery around here. My sister lives in sight of one of them and agrees with me.
However, that doesn't mean that I want to pay taxes or higher electric rates to subsidize expensive, unreliable, supplementary power. I quite understand the problems with running a power grid when a significant portion of the generating capacity keeps going on and off line. I suspect that it should be possible to handle it if the wind power is only 5 or 10% of the total load on the local grid, but not to incorporate any more wind power than this. Transmission losses (plus the problems you have with people hysterically afraid of HV fields when transmission lines must be expanded) limit the range over which wind power can be shared, so in most of the populated areas, there will be times when there is not enough wind anywhere to run a turbine and so the power companies still have to build other kinds of generation plants to cover 100% of the load.
So the question comes down to costs. Wind power requires a substantial capital investment, on top of the capital required to provide 100% of peak load from other sources. It also requires a lot of relatively small generators and other equipment that must be maintained, and maintenance of stuff at the top of a wind tower must cost quite a lot more than in-plant maintenance. On the other hand, there's no fuel cost. Maybe it's possible to engineer the wind systems well enough to make the cost per kilowatt-hour competitive, but I'll believe that when I see a wind farm operating at break-even or better without subsidies.
Jane? Mindles? Winterspeak? Where are you all? I can't escape this sinking feeling that something's wrong in the world when I post more often than our hosts.
Jim,
"also, don't just think in terms of offsetting downtime via peaking plants - didn't your utility have a lot of industrial customers that used power when it was available and are highly sensitive to price? (al smelters, mini-mills, chemical manufacturers, etc.)"
The industries you mention are industries which might be able to deal with planned outages, but would have great difficulty dealing with random, unplanned outages. Process plants can experience real problems recovering from a process interruption. Having a full crew standing around in the dark waiting for the lights to come back on is tough on productivity and profits.
Also, peaking plants which would respond to a loss of wind generation must be running when the wind power becomes unavailable to avoid interruption. This is a cost which must be attributed to the real cost of the wind power.
California may very soon determine the validity fo your 5-10% wind suggestion. California's current conventional capacity reserve margin is ~7%. As the CA RPS is implemented, we (and they) will see how close the wind percentage can get to the conventional capacity reserve margin before stability is threatened. There is nothing more convincing than a full-scale experiment!
Gaius:
since wind power is completely impractical, why does Horizon wind (owned by Goldman Sachs) want to fund this wind farm in Illinois?
obviously it's a drop in the bucket of total power in chicago anyhow, and conveniently near existing transmission lines, but GS is no financial fool.
obviously, they must have some political influence, as with any utility owned power plant (as you've already pointed out) but I can't find any subsidies being provided. on the contrary the county expects the wind farm to pay $1MM/year in taxes on top of about $25k/year to farmer with a tower on their land.
"Forty stories tall, with twirling arms as long as several semis, at least 243 wind towers would be scattered over 50 square miles in what the wind industry says will be the most productive land-based wind farm on Earth. Farmers who toil to make $50,000 in a good year could rent their land to developers and add half that much — guaranteed — by watching the wind blow.
Elsewhere in Illinois, wind projects far less daunting have met stiff opposition. But not here in McLean County, where towns have been dying, shops closing, schools shuttering, population falling and farming fading. In Ellsworth, located a 25-minute drive east of Bloomington, Ill., a town patriarch meets regularly with wind developers over steaks and baked potatoes while hashing out annual compensation over 30 years for neighbors and farmers. McLean County zoning officials, anticipating a $1 million tax windfall annually, are mindful of the developers' every need." http://www.wapa.gov/es/greennews/2005/jun1305.htm
check it out.
since wind power is completely impractical, why does Horizon wind (owned by Goldman Sachs) want to fund this wind farm in Illinois
I'm guessing, here, without any facts, but could the answer possibly be:
because the government is going to subsidize the hell out of the project?
Here in Austin, Austin Energy is touting the fact that their renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy (even to the point of having a lottery to decide who gets to buy the cheaper energy).
Yeah, right. After they've taxed the hell out of all of us to pay for it, the resulting energy is very slightly cheaper than fossil fuel energy.
I'm all for any type of energy that anyone can make work, but let's not obscure the real costs and benefits behind layers of taxation, environmental policy and subsidies.
Lastly, as an engineer that also knows a bit about power generation and the electrical grid, I say: listen to Gaius. What people here aren't understanding is that the "backup" power you need to have available when the wind isn't blowing means a power plant that is staffed and RUNNING, all of the time the wind is blowing so that it can quickly be brought online and throttled up when the wind stops. For every watt of wind power you use, you have to have a watt of conventional power plant sitting around idle - that's a hell of a lot of money.
Yes, folks will buy status symbols.
However, my comment, about the reluctance to invest in upcoming techno changes, stands. Buying a hybrid now isn't such an investment; it would have been 5-10 years ago. Setting up or investing in a company to build Lovins' magical car is.
"I'm guessing, here, without any facts"
great engineering approach to problem solving.
if you even read the snipet that I included you'd see that actually taxes will be flowing the other way on this one (at least on a local level - 1.8 cents/kW-hr from federal subsidy for only 1st ten years of operation -- gas, coal, nuclear get plenty of federal subsidies too).
and your argument about backup power is based on
1) wind as majority/only power source for the system
2) treating variable and capital costs as identical.
on point 1) for the first marginal addition of wind power this is not an issue because it is less than the noise in the system's supply/demand. a statistical analysis could determine the optimum ratio of supply sources, but the optimum fraction of wind power is definitely not zero.
2) natural gas powered peaking plants (which is of course what we're talking about for back-up) has the vast majority of costs as variable fuel costs, with capital costs being dramatically lower than other power sources. wind is the exact opposite. this is highly complimentary.
innovations don't happen via 'trust me i've been in the business for years' analysis by the entrenched. in fact, the more this country continues to add NG generating capacity the more NG prices will continue to rise, which also affects heating bills.
none of this assessment even considers the possibility of clever power storage techniques.
Wind farms are being built because they are getting subsidized by Federal and State Governments, as well as the local utilities being required to purchase the power at inflated rates. Utilities that build farms are also being allowed to put the projects into their rate bases before the projects actually start construction. In other words, the ratepayers start paying the costs before ground is broken.
Investors make decisions to invest when there is sufficient return. Obviously, there is a return. Where it is coming from is another matter. I promise you it is not from the sale of power alone. The flow of tax revenues into municipalities present a windfall for them. But who in the heck do you think pays those taxes? The company? Keep dreaming. You and I pay those taxes by paying higher rates. I don't know where it stands at right now, but at one time in New York more than 45% of the average utility bill was tax. They even passed a law forbidding utilities from breaking that information out so consumers could actually see where their money was going. (I was quite proud of the company I worked for at the time. They defied that law on freedom of speech grounds and won in court.)
Actually, Jim, using NG plants as back-up for wind is not what is happening. Backup is by operating on line (read coal-fired) plants. Straight gas turbines are peakers, combined cycle are short term use plants primarily, used to cover outages on other plants. They are only economical to fire long term when gas prices are depressed. Utilities try to avoid firing gas units whenever possible. That comes back to the unit's start rating (how many starts it can make before a rebuild).
Also, I am not "entrenched". I just have been doing this for a long time and have seen the "what ifs" and "when we" a few times over the years. They never arrive, sadly. You are missing the point that an incremental technology like wind power is incapable of replacing the existing system. Facts are facts. You need a revolutionary technology, a fundamental shift to do that. I rather wish Stephen DenBeste was still writing. He covered that subject pretty thoroughly once.
Since I am not doing all that well convincing you, I strongly suggest you go find a power engineer you can trust to explain this to you. I see that a few people here understand what I have been saying.
Gaius:
I understand exactly where you are coming from. I also miss Den Beste, who was the pre-eminent debunker of liberal fantasies such as wind power. Liberals--to paraphrase Anais Nin--"see the world not as it is, but as they are". Wind power is ideologically "correct", therefor reality must be made to conform. The most extreme results of this approach to the world can be seen in the last century when, for example, Mao starved 28 million people to death by insisting that his collectivist farming techniques were "correct" despite all evidence to the contrary. In fact is to Mao that we owe the term "politically correct".
Not that modern liberals are about to starve anyone, but the placing of ideology above practicality is the same then as now.
"Wind farms are being built because they are getting subsidized by Federal and State Governments, as well as the local utilities being required to purchase the power at inflated rates."
show me the link on the particular project i've referenced for tax subsidies besides the known 1.8cents/kWhr for first ten years (biggest funded wind farm in u.s.) and I'll believe you. otherwise, i'll continue to believe that you're trapped in decades old thinking, ripe for the Schumpetarian engine of economic growth.
Smoov, if I connect a cable between my laptop PC and an available orifice on your person, will a copy of my display appear on the wall?
I wouldn't know precisely how "liberals" think in broad-brush, since I'm not one, but on the other hand you don't seem to be one, either. Perhaps some liberals really are in la-la land, and clearly many of the pro-wind commentators here do NOT adequately grasp the real-world state of electrical grid dynamics.
On the other hand, some are asking the right questions and ought to be taken seriously thereby: What do we do to sustainably address the power needs of a growing country which presently demands ~5tW power/year and derives ~80% of that from carbon emissions? (Hint: the answer is not the ubiquitous More Nukes! talisman, good idea though that is, until the "a miracle happens" stage is reached for long-term waste storage.)
> i'll continue to believe that you're trapped in decades old thinking, ripe for the Schumpetarian engine of economic growth.
There's a huge difference between believing that large change will occur and relying on a specific change to occur.
Lots of smart folks have been working on large scale energy storage for quite some time. Maybe there's some huge breakthrough about to occur, but that's not a smart bet.
Disagree? Feel free to list your investments in the area. (If you're correct, said investments will be incredibly lucrative. Surely doing well and doing good is a moral imperative.)
Andy - i like how you think in terms of - if it's a good business idea, someone will be investing and making money on it. GE has bought the nation's largest wind turbine business, they clearly understand the needs of utilities (and have published reports on how to integrate some fraction into the general system.)
goldman sachs has invested by buying up this horizon wind company who is a (the?) major wind farm builder. what do GE and GS see if not an investment opportunity?
about the storage, i was actually thinking about direct hydrogen generation, if off-grid - good way to store chemical energy, obviously limited in transmission and use at the present because still plentiful natural gas is a strong competitor (and due to hydrogen embrittlement of steel transmission pipes, probably is still quite a ways off; very simple though) aluminum smelting is another form of chemical energy storage.
my original point here, that i'm trying to argue, is non-carbon based electricity supplies are not ridiculous as some others here would believe. arguing that it's impossible flies in the face of accelerating development of wind farms in illinois that i see. the case only gets stronger as you move to minneapolis area. i'm NOT claiming that wind will displace coal/nukes for base-load, but that natural gas is continuously increasing in price with time - wind power provides an economical offset.
and consequently, i commend whole foods for their move, even though their business case is really a marketing one at this point.
> GE has bought the nation's largest wind turbine business, they clearly understand the needs of utilities
No. GE clearly understands after tax return. The profitability of windmill sales doesn't tell us that they're a good energy source - tax incentives matter. (The windmill lobby is pushing utilities to make investments that don't make sense.)
Note that we don't even see the fig leaf of "I invested in GE because of the windmill program".
> about the storage, i was actually thinking about direct hydrogen generation
There are plenty of opportunities to invest in that, yet "thinking" is what we're reading.
> aluminum smelting is another form of chemical energy storage.
Note that even if smelters can tolerate outages, (can they, or are we hoping based on their energy intensity), the capital costs of a smelter that doesn't run 2/3s of the time may be prohibitive.
Again, I'd be much more sympathetic if the advocates invested their money in their good ideas.
BTW - GE makes a lot of money on gas/coal/oil turbine sales and service. If wind power causes cycling and that increases wear-out and overhauls, GE makes more money.
If GE pulled that kind of stunt in other circumstances, "certain folks" would be screaming bloody murder.
An article about using wind power for farming If you're out in the middle of nowhere, you don't have to worry about losses due to transmission. The batteries of electric vehicles help resolve some power storage issues. Dual fuel vehicles at least don't have much trouble starting up multiple times or switching from one power source to another. And the short range and slow speeds of electric vehicles aren't as important if you're doing farmwork, which you don't usually do at high speeds or over wide ranges.
Jim, I'll give you credit for your effort, but you don't have many facts in any of your arguments, none that convince anyway. Perhaps you should know your stuff when debating wind power with a power engineer. As most people know, 'experts' are wrong all the time, but this guy is kicking your ass. Nothing personal, I wouldn't mind less dependence on oil, but I don't want some politician taking my money to fund something based off your arguments.
Andy-
you're right, ge probably is in the wind turbine business because they think they can fool customers into buying something without a business case. then after the utilities figure out how duped they've been, they'll go back and buy other power plants from them.
and those damn hippies at goldman sachs are about to lose their shirts on horizon wind
besides, why would the investments of someone you don't know count for more than the investments of the most dominant industrial company of the world and a major investment bank? i guess you just know more about power generation and finance than general electric and goldman, and the rest of us will have to take your word for it.
Gaius
I take it you are not an engineer. I'm working on a post on this subject right now. I'll post it on my own site when I get done with a peer review.Bottom line - wind power cannot ever be economically or engineering justified. Any system that is so inherently unreliable as to require an installed 100% backup system cannot be justified. If you were required to buy a car that would only run a percentage of the time and could start or stop at completely unpredictable random times, would you be happy? And then after buying that car, you were required to buy another fully fuctional one to cover the times the first was unavailable? Would that make any sense to you?
Reasoning by analogy is dangerous. Some things to consider as you write your posts:
1. Think of wind as part of a diversified generation portfolio. Electric demand is eratic although some patterns exist (more in the daytime, less at night). No plant runs at 100% capacity 100% of the time plus it is probably expensive to 'ramp up' large plants to quickly meet a short run spike in demand. If, say, a system of windmills meet demand spikes 50% of the time then that reduces costs. Granted this envisions wind being only a piece of the energy portfolio but it still can make sense.
A useful analogy you might want to consider is stock portfolio selection. Take one stock that goes up or down dramatically 35% of the time couple it with another stock that does the same and your portfolio will likely be much less eratic than either stock alone. Since spot prices for electric can vary erratically plus fuel costs can vary as well having a low cost system that kicks in power 35% of the time can produce very interesting results.
2. Consider that once you have the windmill up and running generation is cheap. The coal plant manager may not want to be running the generators at full steam at night but the windmill loses nothing when a windy night generates power that is sold at a cheap rate.
3. Excess power can be stored. For example I read recently about a breakthrough for truck engines. It uses the alternator to produce hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is then burned in the engine. Since it burns hot it increases fuel efficiency. Obviously the hydrogen cannot be used to power the truck it can be used to get the truck to go farther on the fuel it has. Imagine excess windpower generating hydrogen that is then stored and used during peak times to add to the output of traditional plants?
4. I've heard the idea floated of using some type of kites to generate wind power. The higher up you go the more constant and reliable wind is. Has anyone seriously explored mounting a wind farm in the sky with blimps and heavy duty lines running to the ground?
5. Another thing I recall reading about both wind and solar, if they are used close to home that impacts transmission costs. Solar panels on a home, for example, feed the house before the grid so even if generation costs are above coal/gas/nuke you have to factor in savings on the transmission. Of course this makes the demand for electricity from a customer more erratic and unpredictable.
I agree that it's hard to see windpower becoming a significant part of the grid unless something radical happens (like higher altitude generators that can be very reliable or serious innovations in transmissions that let power be generated from a very geographically diverse set of windmills). I'd be interested in hearing your ideas about solar. My former brother-in-law once had the idea of buying a windmill, putting it on empty land in PA and selling the power to the electric company. When he researched it he was informed that they would rather he did a field of solar panels that more predictably adds power during peak times.
> you're right, ge probably is in the wind turbine business because they think they can fool customers into buying something without a business case.
Since misrepresenting what I wrote is Jim's best argument....
Jim thinks that wind is a success because it requires mandates, incentives, and publicity buys to grab a small fraction of the market. It's such a success that he's unwilling to invest his money.
> Excess power can be stored. For example I read recently about a breakthrough for truck engines. It uses the alternator to produce hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is then burned in the engine.
Except that the system in question does NOT store hydrogen, and that fact that it doesn't is essential to its practicality.
Trace amounts of hydrogen do improve combustion efficiency. The system in question generates thes trace amounts as needed because using stored hydrogen causes too many problems. Note also the word "trace" - we're talking very small amounts of hydrogen for a large amount of fuel.
In other words, there's no stored hydrogen angle here, no matter how much Jim needs one.
I Have a number of facts to address various comments posted here lately, ut I really don't want to keep threadjacking here and trying our host's patience. I'd be glad to address any comments at my own blog.
Gaius
Gaius,
I think you'll find our hosts are very accommodating when it comes to comments. In a sense, there are very few "off-topic" comments here--the vast majority of the comments had their origin in the original posting. Our hosts (and the readers here) enjoy the free-wheeling discussions that erupt. Only the senseless bashing of one or the other political party is a turnoff. Liberals tend to get bashed more only because they tend to indulge in fuzzy thinking more, but most of us are small "l" libertarians (or Jeffersonians or some other offshoot. None of us belive in "pure" libertarianism.)
So stop apologizing already!
Has anyone seriously explored mounting a wind farm in the sky with blimps and heavy duty lines running to the ground?
Perhaps each of the sky blimps can be shaped like a pie, in honor of the practicality of their incredible manufacturing expense and tremendous maintenance needs?
Ok, well, I'll take your word then, Rex.
Jim, see the following:
http://www.icc.illinois.gov/docs/en/050429ecEnergyImpCommentsWind.pdf
Particularly page 2. Note the pass through to consumers.
A great deal more can be found going through all the plans at:
http://www.icc.illinois.gov/en/ecEnergy.aspx
Contracts themselves will be confidential and proprietary, so you won't actually find them there. I gather you will not take my word on any of this, but there are enormous incentives in place, which is the only reason the big investors are putting one thin dime into this.
Andy is absolutely correct. If I was cynical and all, I might suspect that a company that makes significant money in turbine overhauls and fossil maintenance might have a vested interest in a technology that cause plant cycling thereby increasing the need for said services.
Boonton, since you're jumping in late, I'll have to assume you need to read a little more of what I wrote. You are obviously not an engineer. Reasoning by anology may be dangerous, but using an anology to try to illustrate a complex situation to a non-technical person is not. My reasoning is fairly well laid out in the posts. The car anology is an attempt to get something across, not the reasoning behind it. Frankly (and I am not trying to be rude), your post shows a rather poor grasp of both the facts and of the laws of physics. Good luck on the kites.
There ARE uses for wind power. Stand-alone systems for remote areas, totally non-critical loadings, etc. Not a good choice for the grid.
Gaius
I keep getting shunted off to a holding queue for comments when I try to answer.
Third try at this.
Jim - see the following:
http://www.icc.illinois.gov/docs/en/050429ecEnergyImpCommentsWind.pdf
and
http://www.icc.illinois.gov/en/ecEnergy.aspx
Note incentives and cost recovery wording.
Can't provide the link, Jim. But look at the Illinois Commerce Commission site under electricity.
Incentives and pass-through charges to consumers detailed there under the renewable enrgy stuff.
Except that the system in question does NOT store hydrogen, and that fact that it doesn't is essential to its practicality.
Hmmmm what I'm hearing here is that you have a resource that kicks on only a certain percentage of the time (let's say 35%) and there's no relationship between the system kicking on and unpredictable spikes in demand.
So:
1. If the system kicks on when demand suddenly spikes for whatever reason, everyone wins. Gas fired generators do not have to be swung on causing wear and tear.
2. If the system doesn't kick on when demand spikes then we have the status quo.
3. If the system kicks on when demand is slagging then it seems the best thing to do would be to have some alternative demand that could be kicked on at the fly.
Hydrogen generation was one idea I had but anything that would store energy should work if the economics favor it. For example, what about hydrolic systems that pump water uphill during off-peak demand and then generate power during peak times? If you have economical storage you can turn that unpredictable 35% into 35% of spikes will be covered.
I'm not sure why the idea of 'floating wind farms' needs to be dismissed out of hand. Blimps, I thought, were relatively inexpensive but not very useful these days since they don't go that fast. A floating farm, though, wouldn't have to go anywhere. You would just need to get a wire to the ground
You could also cover the top surfaces of the dirigibles with solar cells. Just don't try to locate the system over Nantucket Sound, where certain people can see it.
Pumped storage systems have been used in a few instances to meet short, sharp peaks. The systems require two appropriate sized lakes, separated by a significant elevation change. The key issues, as with all storage systems, are: what percentage of the work provided as input can be recovered as output; at what rate; and, at what cost. DOE is also funding RD&D on pneumatic storage (compressed air). The key issues are the same.
Boonton, please go read some of what I wrote.
As far as my earlier car analogy, that was not reasoning by analogy, it was trying to get a point across in non-engineering terms. In other words an illustration. My reasoning is pretty well laid out in my comments. I posted a fairly basic primer on power on my own site.
Energy storage is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. In other words, you are going to lose a fairly substantial amount of energy each time you convert form one form to another. This is a fundamental law.
As for the blimp/kite thing. Good luck on that one.
Boonton,
The problem with energy storage is scale. It's easy to store a small amount of energy at low efficiency (say in a battery) but we are talking about storing HUGE amounts of energy, and we need very high efficiency or it's not going to be economical to build and maintaing the generation and storage capacity.
Hydrogen is not a great solution because it's hard to get the power back out at a large scale. Fuel cells are amazingly efficient but expensive and only work at low powers; storage of big enough quantities to run a turbine is extraordinarily difficult because hydrogen only liquifies with a combination of ultra-low temperature and high pressure.
I know there's at least water-pumping scheme in the eastern US: I once met an engineer who worked on it and he said the efficiency wasn't particularly high, certainly not high enough to make a dent in a real national scheme. A better scheme might be to use wind to replace existing large-scale hydro power: rather than pump, just run the existing turbines. That might create cycling problems, and of course it only works in places with major dams (Hoover, Grand Coolee) providing a goodly chunk of the power.
The toughest thing for a layman to appreciate is the supendous scale of power generation and distribution. Our everyday power sources such as internal combustion engines and batteries are ridiculously inefficient compared to real power plants; we accept it in exchange for high reliability and easy cycling.
Spot on, Rob. The people talking the loudest about how easy it is to (fill in the blank here) simply do not comprhend the scale of the grid and how difficult the control of it is. New york spent an insane amount of money and came to the conclusion that the grid there could maybe tolerate 8% or so wind power (going from memory here). Buried in that report are a host of control, voltage support, transmission congestion and load dispatch problems. ALL of those problems get shifted to the utilities to solve with the utilities in turn passing the costs to the consumers.
It ain't cheap. That free power turns out to be pretty expensive.
Geez---
All of the hot air wasted on the comments for this post prove that wind power is a viable alternative energy source. Hell, been keeping business running for years here in Washington!
Jane, Where are 'ya?
I’m not sure what everyone is talking about here as far as storage is concerned. Electricity can be stored nine ways from Friday. You can store it as compressed air, hydraulics, water, gravity, and so on. The lower efficiency of any of these methods doesn’t really concern me since the cost to produce the electricity is essentially free after the up front costs are paid for.
It seems to me that if engineers worked on ways to solve problems rather then figuring out reasons to discount wind energy, we could solve those issues. It seems more like there are people who want wind power to fail.
And all this griping about subsidies, my god oil and natural gas are one of the most subsidized industries on the planet. Nuclear energy is also subsidized; power companies won’t even start to build one unless the government subsidizes the insurance.
I’m not stupid enough to assert that wind and solar power will solve all of our problems but the issues you all seem to be talking about nine terms of storage and timing are a hell of a lot less difficult to sort out then making Canadian sand tars economical from both a monetary stand point and an energy investment stand point (EROI).
Also the big problem with nuclear is that you are setting up a situation where every country on the planet will be a nuclear power. God you think proliferation is an issue now? Wait until nuclear power is the cheapest to produce and any country that wants to develop will have to have nuclear power generation. Good luck keeping the genie in the bottle.
> The lower efficiency of any of these methods doesn’t really concern me since the cost to produce the electricity is essentially free after the up front costs are paid for.
Lots of things are "feasible" if you ignore capital costs. Heck - the above is even ignoring some of the marginal costs. (Those "low efficiency" storage mechanisms have both.)
Wind power's capital costs are already high enough without wasting it with low efficiency storage.
> It seems to me that if engineers worked on ways to solve problems rather then figuring out reasons to discount wind energy, we could solve those issues.
Engineers have an interesting constraint - our stuff has to actually work at the required scale. Power is huge - many things that sort of work at small scale don't work at all at large scale.
If you think that wind power or low efficiency storage is a great idea, invest your money. If an idea isn't worth your money, how can you demand mine?
The lower efficiency of any of these methods doesn’t really concern me since the cost to produce the electricity is essentially free after the up front costs are paid for.
It should concern you, if you are at all serious and not just interested in lobbing grenades into the debate.
Lake pairs in convenient locations don't usually dam up themselves, and there are environmental issues to be taken into account when creating them (that is, if there is suitable topography and geological stability for creating them, and environmental issues are especially important in the water-poor western US).
Meanwhile machinery and/or chemical devices for storing electricity do not last forever and do not manufacture themselves, so at some lower level of inefficiency for any given technology, the energy gains from implementing that technology are outweighed by the energy investment required to produce and maintain said gear!
It seems to me that if engineers worked on ways to solve problems rather then figuring out reasons to discount wind energy, we could solve those issues. It seems more like there are people who want wind power to fail.
Nice attempt to shift the scope of the debate by making the real-world practicality issues someone's fault, but I'm not buying. Fact is, there are countless engineers and other scientific professionals working on exactly these things (or peripheral areas that could eventually benefit these things). Obviously, anyone who discovers the better energy mousetrap ahead of his or her contemporaries, stands to make a small mint of money from it, so there is no shortage of market incentive.
What the ones here are telling you is, your perceptions of what ought to be are increasingly divorced from what practically can be, given what we presently have and know. Or do you suppose that you, mostly by dreaming, have discovered something about power grid dynamics that countless millions of research dollars and hundreds of minds brighter than yours, focused in the same direction, have failed to see? If so, find a sponsor and sell it. Otherwise, you are the equivalent of a child insisting that the world should be made of chocolate.
Almost anything is possible (including that analogous chocolate world) given unlimited resources, but not all possible things are practical, feasible, or provide a net benefit just because they push the right pleasure-sensor buttons in a person's brain.
With apologies to George Stevens, Alan Ladd and Brandon De Wilde:
"Jane! Come Back, Jane! We want you, Jane!"
MB
One of the biggest problem Engineers encounter is people who either cannot or will not understand the constraints the laws of physics put upon us. I am not just making this stuff up, folks.
I am not close-minded or anti-technology or old-fashioned. I've championed new technologies many times in my career. Some folks here understand what I have been saying. Their posts support my points. Others either can't or won't understand. I've tried to make it as understandable to non-engineers as I can. Anything more technical would simply lose everyone who doesn't understand the math involved.
I really wish DenBeste's stuff was still available out there. He did a really good treatment of why some things are simply impossible. Also why some technologies look great on paper and simply won't function in the real world. (I could tell a long story involving an NRC inspector and an impossible design demand, but will refrain).
Nonetheless, this site does have some really good dialog in the comments section.
Electricity can be stored nine ways from Friday
At small scales and low efficiencies for specialized purposes, yes. Every cell phone has nifty NiCad cell that keeps it going for a few hours. But you will note that every hospital "stores" electricity in the form of diesel fuel for an emergency generator (which runs at less than 30% efficiency, wasting the rest as heat), and even then doesn't use all of its lights or outlets when on backup power because the generator isn't big enough. There just isn't room or money for enough batteries or compressed air or whatever to keep even one small office building going.
Multiply that problem by multiple millions and you'll see why the grid can't be run off a really big lead-acid cell, no matter how cheaply you charge it. Not to mention the capital and maintanence costs of such a cell.
There's a reason that things you can't plug into a wall are covered in EE programs under the heading of "micropower design."
Since no one here will listen to reason, here are some authorities:
I could keep this up all day. There are countless
studies to quote.
As an engineer, I LOVE the idea of renewable energy that doesn't produce waste. But, as an engineer, I'm forced to make it actually work in practice and, like the thousands before me, I don't see a way. Solar energy, I think, has a better future (although it is no panacea either). Wind energy is just too fickle and capital intensive.
Both have their place in certain areas: rural places where infrastructure is scarce, movie star homes and so on. They just aren't a replacement for traditional generation.
In the short term, say for the next 50 years, I think we can limp by on a mix of over-expensive, botique energy, more nuclear plants and more coal and gas plants. Also, I think we can do a LOT more in terms of peak demand reduction (something in its infancy today).
In the long term, we're going to have to come up with something radical. Nuclear fussion, solar power satellites, radically better battery technology, something. Maybe a combination of more than one of those.
As I said before, the single biggest mistake we can make here is to cloud the issue. By hiding true costs behind subsidies, taxes, laws requiring a certain percentage of power to come from "green" sources and so on, we make it all the harder for the free market to solve the problem properly.
Mixing politics with science almost always leads to costly mistakes.
Here's what I'm hearing, and our engineer friends just have to be patient with us since this is the sort of thing many of us think about but have little first hand knowledge:
1. Wind power requires overbuilding since you need extra capacity to ensure you have serious reliability of production.
2. Power storage is not practical for now on a large scale.
3. There's no easy place to put 'extra electricity'. You can't just toss it into a battery to save for a demand spike.
4. Gas turbines are used to fire up quickly to meet demand spikes. Coal plants cannot increase/decrease their operating power so quickly. Starting up and down shortens the life of a gas plant increasing refurbishing costs etc.
Now hypothetically suppose you have enough windmills out there to equal a gas turbine you'd normally use for demand spikes. If you take the 35% figure, that means whenever a demand spike hits there's a 35% chance the windmills can meet it (I'm being simplistic here, assuming at any given time there's a 35% chance the windmills are generating 100% power and a 65% chance they are generating 0%. I know in reality they will be all over the place).
So basically one turbines worth of windmills will reduce the turbine use by 35%. I don't know how often demand spikes happen but they must happen enough to make it worthwhile to invest in turbines. At any time when there is no demand spike, though, there's also a 35% chance that the windmills will be kicking extra power into the system.
So there's no easy place to stash extra power but it still seems odd to bemoan this extra power as a problem. Even if it is sold at dirt cheap prices it's revenue. Would it make sense to 'lock' the windmill so no power was made?
Now how about homes that install windmills and solar panels. Wouldn't that make their demands more unpredictable? Would it be an economic harm to the power generator? So much so that it would make sense for the generator to pay homeowners NOT to install windmills/panels if it weren't for the fact that so many think they are the answer to our problems?
It seems like a better solution would be to move towards more 'smart metering' that could kick in useful processes on the fly when power prices go low and kick off unessential ones when prices spike.
I'm also curious as to how solar panels are viewed. While they don't produce much output it seems more predictable and has the advantage of producing the most during the day when demand is typically high.
Boonton, the easiest way to think about it is that it is a zero sum game. Power in always equals power out. The supply side tracks the demand side, not the other way. There is no "extra" power to sell, cheap or not.
The problem with the scenario you describe is that say you had 35% wind on line, you have to reduce the fossil plant by 35%. (And that is a HUGE load drop for a plant. Chances are the plant is going to be pretty unstable at that low an output). I gets even more problematic when you get into reactive power (which has to come from the fossil plant, wind generators don't do reactive).
If a lot of homeowners put in windmills, it would become a stability issue. But here's where that scale thing comes in. Small home use is noise on the system - different